Linking Up

Central Coast residents lucky enough to find themselves at a barbecue with Gil and Jennie Diaz, have probably sampled some of their delicious homemade sausages. The pair always seem to be working the grill, cooking up and sharing a variety of these artisan links with hovering and salivating partygoers.

After some not-so-subtle hinting by Kathy and me at a recent outdoor event, the pork masters graciously invited us to a day of sausage making at Chez Diaz. We joined our friends Greg, Karen, Kelly and Arent for a lesson in the craft of stuffing ground meat into casings.

These guys live large. Gil and Jennie have an infectious zest for good food and drink. When they warned that the morning was going to start off with bloody marys we knew this would be no ordinary classroom. Luckily we managed to keep the priapic humor somewhat in check and soaked up the wisdom of these two great chefs as they patiently taught this group of novices the art of meat processing. We tried our greasy hands at three varieties: Italian, Polish and Swiss.

These are probably the first recipes on Holy Mole that aren’t for the average home cook (besides the Mole). Gil and Jennie admit to burning through a Kitchen Aid and several food processors before finally buying a commercial grade meat grinder and borrowing a cast iron sausage stuffer that looks like it was made in the 1800s.

However an adventuresome amateur could have respectable results with the help of their neighborhood butcher and a Kitchen Aid sausage stuffer.

Each of the seasoning mixtures below calls for 20 pounds of pork that has been put through a 3/8 inch grind plate. The meat should be a combination of 75% trimmed pork butt and 25% pork fat. Have your butcher grind and blend the meat and fat.






One hank of hog casings was plenty for 60 pounds of sausage. Separate out the casings and run fresh water through each a couple of times. Carefully rinse the salt preservative off of the outside of them before starting. Set aside the cleaned casings in small bowls of cold water, taking care to drape an end of each over the side of the bowl so you can easily grab them when you need them.





Make sure the meat mixture is well chilled before starting to mix in the seasonings. After mixing the seasonings with your hands, taking care not to overwork the meat, chill it again for about an hour before loading the meat into the sausage stuffer. If the meat seems dry, add just enough liquid (water or more wine) so that it runs through the stuffer smoothly.



Place a casing onto the sausage tube and stuff away, keeping a gentle pressure with one hand on the end of the tube to keep out air bubbles and coiling the sausage onto a large platter. When the casing is full, gently pinch off links between thumbs and forefingers rolling the sausages a few times to separate the links.

Polish
96g Kosher Salt
14g Crushed Black Pepper
24g Ground Marjoram
24g Ground Summer Savory
½ cup minced Onion

Swiss
100g Kosher Salt
112g Dextrose
9g Allspice
57g Crushed Black Pepper
4g Cinnamon
16 cloves Garlic, pureed
24oz Red wine

Italian
70g Kosher Salt
48g Whole Fennel Seed
24g dried Oregano
24g dried Thyme
3 Cups fresh chopped Parsley
35g Crushed Black Pepper
40 cloves Garlic, pureed
10g Red Pepper Flakes
32g Dextrose